Weird Friendship
by crackers4jenn
Summary: So they banned Jeff from the study group. Big deal. Takes place during Environmental Science.


**Title:** Weird Friendship  
**Summary:** _So they banned him from the study group. Big deal._  
**Fandom:** Community  
**Spoilers:** This takes place during Environmental Science.  
**Word Count:** A little over 1000

***

The group bailing on Jeff was predictable.

Please. From the get-go, it was nothing but amateur moves. Sending him to Senor Chang as the big voice of logic? Yeah. And in other ironically backfiring news, North Korea hates when American hikers get lost on its soil.

What Jeff didn't expect was the palpable devastation at being outcast. The grief. The days spent sobbing into pillows and ice cream cartons, consolable only when watching Grey's Anatomy--

_Whatever_.

So they banned him from the study group. Big deal. He'd been banned from way less, and on that point, for way less too.

(Example: because of Senor Chang's alcohol-fueled karaoke rendition of "Rock With You", neither were allowed back at City Bar. There might be photographic evidence of Jeff serenading an elderly woman, against her wishes. In his defense, she had an attractive walker.)

The thing about being an independent thinker, one who doesn't rely on group momentum, is that he doesn't need them. Not a'one of them. Not Pierce and his words that have no brain filter. Not Shirley and her springy, ethnically awesome hair. Not Britta (way too literal; also, heavy on the judgment), not Annie (or her double-spaced papers), not Troy (Jeff would miss the puns, though), not even Abed.

Such is his great power as an individual.

The first post-breakup (_really_) encounter is with Pierce, who Jeff sees hanging out near the cafeteria entrance. It's not so much an 'encounter' as it is a candid peek into the man's cerebral cortex. When Pierce spots Jeff, he shuffles one way, then the other, then makes a noise that sounds like _wahoo!_ before scuffling inside the building.

Really, Jeff should be glad he gave these people up. Because _seriously_.

Annie climbs out of the bushes next, which probably should stop being so freaking weird, but considering she's got this overzealous, crazed look about her, it's like the D-Day of weird.

"Doesn't this go against the post-break-up stipulations?" he asks when she saddles up alongside of him. "I mean, I assume some were written out, as well as a handy travel-sized scroll detailing my banishment. 'Reason number two-oh-five to avoid Jeff: in a recurring fashion, he once again proves to be selfish.'"

Of course, if there's anyone that would crumble first, it's her. Shocker.

"It was agreed that, as a group, we would shun you."

"Shun," he laughs. "There's an appropriate term for ye olde 2009."

"But specifically, no one ever said anything about one-on-one alone time--"

"Wow, you are really propositioning me right now, aren't you? And on campus, in the midst of a shun?" He sucks in a deep breath, mean and mocking all at once.

It stops her, which stops him. She's got that hurt puppy, angry kitten look, and hell no he's not letting it corrupt his manly defenses.

"Fine," she decides, "but all I was doing was trying to ask if you wanted a friend. Through all of this. Because I happen to know what it's like to be an outcast, and that's not something I would wish on anybody. Even you. Jerk-face."

With that, she stomps off. It's not even worth mentioning that he feels the tender strings of a sappy violin in the background, because _damn_, she is good.

"Ugh, wait," he calls after her, jogging--seriously, no sense of self-respect--to catch up to her. "Wait, wait, fine."

She slows down but doesn't look his way.

"Great. You're going to do that thing where you won't talk until I grovel."

"No," she says, "I'm trying to figure out if your coping mechanism by way of insults is a character default or defining trait."

"Ouch. Deserved that, I guess, it's just--" He grabs her by the arm, stopping them. Walking and talking seems so fucking cliché, like they're in The O.C. "Look, honestly, I don't do this very well. Feelings and emotions and _blah blah_, taste my tears. It's annoying."

"Maybe if you expressed yourself more often, you wouldn't have so much trouble."

"Skipping that tangent. Let's say I agree to take you up on your... we'll call it youthful misgivings... what's the fine print? Backgammon with Pierce? Football practice with Troy?"

She shrinks, anger mostly fizzled away. "I hadn't thought it that far through."

"Really? You were hiding in the bushes with a plan that had zero follow-through?"

"My actions are normally jump-started by motivation. A plan happens after, usually on its own."

"I'm not even going to begin to pretend to understand that. So, _friend_. Wanna grab some lunch?"

***

They slide into a booth in the corner, Annie checking and re-checking to make sure they haven't been spotted by anyone they may mutually know.

"I feel like we just entered the witness protection program," Jeff says. "Either that, or I'm in a really bad episode of Law and Order."

She drags her backpack to the table, it landing with a forcible _thud_ that reverberates through the booth. Unzipped, its contents start to leak. Folders and binders and wayward pencils and at least three calculators, hand sanitizer, a hairbrush, a ruler, some colored paper clips. She just stuffs it all to the side to pull out a brown paper bag, which Jeff realizes is her lunch, and how sad and pathetic is that?

"Packing heat?"

She gives him the ol' patented _I can tell you're joking, but what's the punch line?_ face. Then: "My parents stopped trusting me to carry concealed after I emptied the whole barrel during a brutal chess defeat--" At his look of genuine horror, she laughs. "I'm kidding. That was a joke."

His laugh is borderline _are you nuts?_ and uncomfortable but there may also be the slight twinge of approval. "No way did I believe you when you said you shot at someone over chess. There was disbelief."

Her lunch is still in the bag when they spot Abed and Troy, who do a double-take their way. Abed, anyway. Troy is busy spinning a folder on one finger.

Jeff says, "Angry mob at 4 o'clock," but Annie's got everything shoved back in the back pack, slipping out of the seat.

"This doesn't reflect poorly on my character or yours," she whisper-shouts, then disappears into a group of passing students.

Jeff is still walking through what just happened, when Abed and Troy slink up.

"What up?" says Troy, oblivious, and Abed elbows him. He scowls. "_Dude_. You _know_ you have freakishly pointy elbows."

Abed doesn't argue this fact. Instead he stares at Jeff, then the empty spot where once sat Annie, then Jeff, who has now affected an air of casualness to his being. He crooks an eyebrow, the subtext being: _bring it._

"Where'd she go?"

"Sorry," Jeff says, arched against the booth's badly padded cushion. "I have _no_ idea what you're talking about."

"Annie," Abed slowly says. "She was just here."

"Or was she?"

"I'm pretty sure she was."

"While I'm being _shunned_? That doesn't sound very Annie-like to me. Who, by the way, is anal to the point of neurotic when it comes to rules."

Troy nods. "That is true. Remember when we protested pencils because of their racist-colored lead? She _still_ won't use 'em, even though we gave that cause up for good. The real racists are staplers."

Actually, Jeff gave up the pencils because it was an easy excuse to not do any work. But okay.

Then Britta barks, "Guys!" from across the cafeteria, glowering, emphatically gesturing them back with angry hand movements and the devil's magic.

"Better go before she unleashes the hell hounds," Jeff warns.

"There ain't no..." Troy laughs, but it fades. Terror takes reign. "Abed? I'm scared."

Abed offers one last, unwavering stare, saying, "I can't prove anything, so I can't accuse anything, but. She was here. It's _predictable_ in nature, therefore in theory, therefore in life."

Britta shouts, "Stop staring at the enemy! TROY! And ABED!"

"Gotta go," Abed says, swiftly turned around and headed the opposite way with a trailing Troy.

Well, that was motivation enough to seek out a new Spanish support system.

There's a clinking on the window beside the booth, from the outside. Annie is standing there, among the vines and bushes, hunched over so she won't be seen. She gives him a cheerful, dare-I-say peppy farewell wave before spinning around, maneuvering back through the shrubbery.

If that was friendship, then Jeff maintains: friendship is freaking _weird_.


End file.
